Post-apocalyptic videogames are uniquely capable of modelling the biopolitics of post-apocalyptic worlds, in ways that other cultural forms cannot.

How do videogames present paradigmatic models for the bio- and necro-politics of post-apocalypse? As ideological machines, immersive worlds, and interactive interpellations. This ten-minute presentation outlines a threefold argument:

1) How does the ideological governmentality of post-apocalyptic videogames simulate biopolitics at the end of the world?

By presenting new systems of governance through their underlying rulesets, games model the new, often challenging political-economic systems of post-apocalyptic life.

2) How does the immersive temporal-spatiality of post-apocalyptic videogames represent biopolitics at the end of the world?’

By presenting new forms of (post)human life, forcing us to navigate which forms of life to consider ‘valid’ (Foucault, 1978; Agamben, 1998), grievable (Butler, 2016) or killable (Mbembe, 2019); in the process reframe familiar considerations of gender, sexuality, race, (dis)ability and speciesism.

3) How does the interpellatory play of post-apocalyptic videogames enact biopolitics at the end of the world?’

By subjecting players to their rulesets and worlds, post-apocalyptic games interpellate us into subject positions (Althusser, 1969), that practice the hypothetical biopolitics at the end of the world: how will ‘you’ survive, foster, exclude or erase post-apocalyptic life?

The theoretical contribution of researching videogames as ideological machines, immersive worlds, and interactive interpellations of the post-apocalypse brings a core understanding of how millions of players have rehearsed the everyday rules, worlds, and subjecthoods of post-apocalyptic life.

References

Agamben, Giorgio (1998) Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life, translated by Daniel Heller-Roazen, Stanford University Press.

Althusser, Louis. (1969 [2014]). On the reproduction of capitalism: Ideology and ideological state apparatuses. Verso Books.

Butler, J. (2016). Frames of war: When is life grievable?. Verso Books.

Foucault, M. (1978 [2008]) The Birth of Biopolitics: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1978–1979, trans. Graham Burchell. New York.

Mbembe, A. (2019). Necropolitics. Duke University Press.

This study is framed within Horizon’s FOODMISSION research project, which aims to engage citizens as agents of food system change through a novel gamified platform. This systematic literature review examines the current academic discourse surrounding the application of gamification strategies and serious games to promote behavioral change related to healthy and sustainable habits.

Growing evidence indicates that gamification and serious games effectively promote healthy, sustainable behaviors by increasing engagement and motivation (Azevedo et al., 2018; Fatima et al., 2023) and raising awareness to influence real-world decisions (Bohm et al., 2021). However, most studies are short-term, focus on younger populations, and emphasize healthy diets over sustainability (Chow et al, 2020; Skouw et al, 2020; Lamas et al., 2023). Moreover, current systematic reviews primarily examine the link between games and healthy eating, while neglecting the broader connection to sustainable food practices.

To address this gap, we conducted a systematic literature review on research on gamification and serious games promoting healthy, sustainable behavior. We analyzed English publications published between 2010 and 2025 and stored in Scopus. The initial search yielded 3,480 potentially eligible publications. Using AS-reviewlab, we narrowed the sample to 56 papers, excluding those with restricted access, focused on medical health, general sustainability, or mobility. Then, thematic analysis using Atlas.ti was executed.

Gamification and serious games are revolutionizing sustainability rapidly and show potential to significantly drive healthy food choices and lasting behavioral change. This study reports on over 10 gamified strategies proven effective in encouraging healthy food habits and sustainable behavior change. Highlighting both opportunities and gaps in existing research, underscoring the possibilities of gamified solutions to promote long-term sustainable food habits.

The relationship between pedagogy and materialism is fraught with persistent tension. A “materialist pedagogy” therefore confronts a profound conceptual paradox. Pedagogy, by its nature, aims to transform consciousness—altering ideas, mentalities, and perspectives. From a materialist standpoint, however, this focus is inherently suspect. It risks remaining confined to an idealist framework, presupposing a simplistic link between a change in consciousness and a subsequent change in material reality. This creates a dichotomy: pedagogy is relegated to the ‘ideal’ realm of thought, while ‘radical’ transformation is sought in the ‘material’ world. Reconsidering this divide is crucial, as it shapes how critical theory conceives the possibility of praxis—how thinking might act upon the world without lapsing into abstraction or technocratic mediation.

The main argument of this presentation is that the emerging video game subgenre of “perspective puzzles” offers a unique model for resolving this impasse. In these games, the pedagogical act of changing one’s perspective is rendered tangibly material. The shift in viewpoint leads directly to a transformation of the game world, crucially bypassing the mediation of instrumental rationality. Drawing on Walter Benjamin’s conception of materialist pedagogy as the production of knowledge that affords “access to practice,” my presentation analyzes the gameplay mechanics of Viewfinder (Sad Owl, 2023) as its case study. I demonstrate how this game enacts an experiment in materialist pedagogy, in which the gap between consciousness and action collapses, and seeing differently becomes an act of material transformation. In doing so, it reimagines the pedagogical encounter as a site where thought and matter co-shape one another.

(Video)games are divisive media. Some (continue to) study whether they may cause violence or exacerbate toxic masculine attitudes. Others argue that they can change the world for better, including in their engagement with the climate crisis. The instability of the current ecological predicament implies that such determinacy is wont to contradict itself. One consequence of the present ecological rupture is the emerging multifariousness of ecocritical work, as evidenced by recent ecogame scholarship. This paper considers recent developments in ecocriticism and evaluates discourse on ecogames through a lens that complicates idealist and materialist forms of ecogame criticism. The idealist form revolves around games as textual media that s(t)imulate ecological thinking, whereas the materialist approach revolves around games as environmental media that are entangled with their production contexts. Rather than attempting to synthesize these fundamentally opposed analyses, this paper argues to embrace their contradictions as a form of productive games ecocriticism. While the prevalence of eco-contradiction in media culture is well-established, the task of the ecogame critic would accordingly be to pre-emptively consider contradiction in their analytical stance. The question is: how? To this end, this paper considers three forms of contradiction-embracing ecocriticism: 1) studies of games that reflect on their implicated material cultures; 2) studies of the material contexts of game production and how they relate to the ecological aesthetics of games; and 3) the study of idealist-materialist contradictions as they fold onto each other in ecocritique.

Does Artificial Intelligence play and do we play with it? This study investigates the playful dynamics of human–machine communication by examining how the AI socialbot CommentRobot is integrated into the Chinese social media platform Weibo. Built on a Large Language Model and fine-tuned with platform-specific lexicon and cultural references, CommentRobot is known for its unpredictability. It selectively engages users through automated comments that are sometimes witty, sometimes heartwarming, and occasionally inappropriate or boundary-crossing. Its presence has also inspired the formation of an online community, the ‘Victim Alliance of CommentRobot’ where users share their unexpected encounters with the socialbot.  

Moving beyond existing frameworks that conceptualize AI agents as assistants, friends, therapeutic companions, and intimate partners, this research conceptualises CommentRobot as a ‘playmate’, a social actor that participates in fleeting and playful exchanges with users. Drawing on data from observations and semi-structured interviews, I combine expectancy violations theory (Burgoon, 2015) with sociological theories of play (Henricks, 2006, 2015). The platform’s design and targeted training cultivate the socialbot’s playful personality, characterized by acts of identity and role play. The norm-defying actions of CommentRobot are anthropomorphically interpreted as performance of play, which disrupts traditional social roles and boundaries and brings fun. However, due to the lack of user consent and the socialbot’s non-human status, user responses reveal a reluctance toward active play and a preference for playful spectatorship. Extending play theory from human to human–machine interactions, this study explores the potential of AI playmates in future game studies.  

References: 

Burgoon, J.K. (2015). Expectancy violations theory. The international encyclopedia of interpersonal communication, pp.1-9. 

Henricks, T. S. (2006). Play Reconsidered: Sociological Perspectives on Human Expression (1st ed.). University of Illinois. 

Henricks, T. S. (2015). Play and the human condition (1st ed.). University of Illinois Press. 

Trolling has emerged as a political strategy for the MAGA/Trump movement, often used to conceal racist nationalist speech while simultaneously serving as a unifying factor for the entire rightwing, bringing together atheist libertarians and Christian fundamentalists (Topinka 2018, Greene 2019, May & Feldman 2018, Marx & Sienkiewicz 2022). Previous scholarship has fruitfully analyzed trolling as a form of irony, deception, bullying, sarcasm, or satire (Greene 2019, Topinka 2018, Dynel 2016, Polak & Trottier 2020, Fielitz & Thurston 2018), However, the relationship between humorous, playful, and serious elements in trolling has not yet been fully systematized.
This research builds on those previous works, while specifically connecting trolling with psychology and play studies. More precisely, I propose that Richard Schechner’s concept of “dark play” can offer a more layered and comprehensive understanding of trolling (Schechner 1995). What sets dark play apart from other concepts, such as irony or bullying, is something I call dark absorption: the element of ‘losing oneself in play’, which, I believe, is essential in explaining how conservative trolling contributes to political radicalization.
At the end, I will argue that dark play/trolling functions as a central unifying and radicalizing force in Trumpism– indicating an absorptive process of radicalization from playful to more serious ideological stances.

Urban digital twins are increasingly pushed as a set of technologies to support urban planning. The digital twin is meant to allow for both the city’s virtual destruction and its real improvement. With twins the interfaces used in urban governance are changing. In particular, the use of game engines as a suite of tools originally designed and used to render gaming content are now used for the visualization of data derived from ensembles of models each with their own histories. Run-ins between embodied realities and serious games have shown that models used in everyday civic applications may be built upon assumptions that have the potential to elicit knee-jerk reactions and hasty (participatory) policymaking. Game engines, for example, may emphasize speed over details or may suggest a cinematographic look and feel, which in turn shapes how urban data can be presented. Moreover, unless fed with massive amounts of data, game engines stand to homogenize the urban landscape, rendering differences invisible while also imposing a default aesthetic on every building and every area. The use of video game engines not only enables ‘realistic’ 3D renderings but also promotes a specific aesthetic and a particular understanding of what counts as ‘realistic.’ We caution that policymakers who become reliant upon these ways of using game engines to render the city may consider that these ways of communicating data present a version of a city that is perhaps inaccurately sanitized and abnormally friction-free.

The reception of Greek mythology in video games is frequently considered to be violent, masculine, and sexist. Nevertheless, recent game titles have offered alternatives to this generalizing description, indicating what more diverse or inclusive video game versions of Greek myth could look like. In this presentation, I discuss these developments in relation to the concept of hegemony, or a society’s dominant power which structures cultural representation and oppresses any identities perceived as deviant. Specifically, I investigate whether the distinction between hegemony and counter-hegemony maps onto a frequently drawn line between ‘AAA’ and ‘indie’ games, or the ‘mainstream’, corporate, big-budget game industry on the one hand, and games made by smaller teams or singular individuals on the other. Ultimately, this article aims to refocus the discussion of (counter-)hegemony in video games towards players rather than developers, doing so not to discount exclusionary development practices, but to acknowledge the increasingly influential role that game audiences have on the process of production.

Universities and academia in games are often associated with magic, whether it is magic in its most literal sense, or as a state of feeling enchanted by the institution’s allure. Why are universities portrayed as powerful places shrouded by mystery and mystique?

By using the example of a recent study by van Tilborg & Groote (currently under review, International Journal of Role-Playing), the presenter will illustrate how university heritage can be utilized as an impactful element for world-building in games, with much potential outside the realm of wizards and witches. Additionally, the presenter invites the audience to critically reflect on what heritage means. Not necessarily as the material and immaterial expressions of culture, but as a living process of negotiation and a resource for social-cultural, economic, and political agendas (e.g. Graham et al. 2000).

In the study, a close reading was applied to EA Sports College Football 25: the best-selling sports video game in the U.S of all-time (Wilson 2024). The authors concluded that the game’s commercial success and popularity lie in the near-hyper realistic portrayal of game-day pageantry, which fosters a sense of place and celebrates the unique heritage of 134 American universities. College Football 25 emphasizes the use of heritage as an instrument of conflict, as many aspects of competition and rivalry between universities are prominent in the game’s presentation and execution. Furthermore, the authors argue that interactive digital media can effectively preserve and promote heritage, strengthening place attachment even when physically removed from the heritage site.

[KEYWORDS]: universities, heritage, conflict, place attachment, sports, video games, USA

Graham, Brian, Gregory J. Ashworth, and John Tunbridge. 2000. A Geography of Heritage. 1st ed. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315824895.

Wilson, Jason. 2024. “EA Sports College Football 25 Is the Best-Selling Sports Game of All Time in the U.S.” Sports Business Journal, December 18, 2024. https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/12/18/ea-sports-college-football-25-best-selling-sports-video-game-all-time.

This study explores the motivations, strategies, and encountered challenges when incorporating Chinese ICH in mobile games from the perspectives of Chinese designers. For a long time, a big number of game designers have concentrated on the hedonistic enjoyment that video games bring (Ivory, 2018). However, nowadays, the integration of cultural heritage elements has become a focus of multiple video game designers (Spanos, 2021; Wills, 2021), which is considered to provide a more eudaimonic meaningful gratification (Oliver & Bartsch, 2010). The existing academic studies have mainly focused on analysing game content and player interviews regarding on the representation of intangible cultural heritage (IHC) in Chinese games. Our systematic literature review also reveals that mobile games received less academic attention.
To address these academic gaps, we conducted six semi-structured expert interviews with Chinese mobile games designers, each of which lasted 90 minutes to two hours. Thematic analysis was then conducted to analyse the interviews.
The analysis of this study suggests that the incorporation of Chinese ICH in mobile games is driven by three main motivations: cultural dissemination, market-driven purposes, and monetisation. Firstly, Chinese mobile game designers emphasised the advocacy of disseminating Chinese culture. In this sense, designers stress the importance of being accurate in cultural representation, particularly in creating game characters and worldview. However, designers also encounter challenges regarding societal and governmental censorship. Secondly, designers incorporate Chinese ICH to attract new players and maintain player engagement, in which they distinguish between domestic and foreign markets and rely on insights from player research teams. Lastly, Chinese designers explain their need to incorporate Chinese ICH for monetisation purpose, while distinguishing between revenue generated from in-game cosmetic goods and income resulted from “IP” expansion.

Reference list:
Ivory, J. D. (2018). A Brief History of Video Games. In The Video Game Debate. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315736495-1
Oliver, M. B., & Bartsch, A. (2010). Appreciation as Audience Response: Exploring Entertainment Gratifications Beyond Hedonism. Human Communication Research, 36(1), 53–81. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.2009.01368.x
Spanos, A. (2021). Games of history: Games and gaming as historical sources. In Games of History: Games and Gaming as Historical Sources. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780429342479
Wills, J. (2021). “Ain’t the American Dream Grand”: Satirical Play in Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto V. European Journal of American Studies, 16(3). https://doi.org/10.4000/ejas.17274

Traditionally, video games are perceived as a trivial medium primarily designed for mindless pleasure [1]. However, games are increasingly offering emotionally intense stories and characters that can lead to more profound or ‘eudaimonic’ player experiences (EPX), including personally meaningful, emotionally moving, and (self-)reflective responses while playing [2]. While previous research has extensively examined eudaimonia from a player perspective, including their experiences [3-6] and motivations [7-9], the production side of eudaimonic gaming remains largely underexplored [10]. To investigate game developers’ intentions and strategies related to EPXs, in-depth interviews with 20 Belgian game developers¬ from eleven different studios, including one AAA studio, were conducted. Findings are categorized into three broad themes: the impact of various studio roles and studio size (indie vs. AAA) on eudaimonic intentions, and the specific development strategies and related game elements developers prioritize to create EPXs. Around 75% of the interviewees reported clear eudaimonic intentions for their games, aiming for example on player reflection and personal growth. Unsurprisingly, top-tier roles (CEOs, game and creative directors) primarily defined a game’s direction, including its eudaimonic intentions. Developers generally agreed that indie developers typically exhibit more eudaimonic intentions than AAA studios, though variation exists: some indies prioritized artistic games with almost exclusively eudaimonic intentions, compared to others designing ‘open experiences’ allowing for both (superficial) fun and (deeper) EPXs. There is no single recipe for translating eudaimonic intentions into player experiences. Developers mentioned several broader strategies, including experimenting with game elements, adopting a reflective design approach, extensive playtesting, and creating an immersive and powerful narrative—often drawing from developers’ own or other people’s real-life experiences. These results offer valuable insights for developers, showing how to create EPXs; how these can attract a diversifying player audience seeking thought-provoking and emotionally intense game content over fast-paced action games; and how the maturation of the medium—driven by EPXs—might further result in more favorable policy decisions, lead to better funding opportunities for the gaming industry, and improve public perception toward games as a whole.

References:
[1] Reer, F., Küpper, L. M., Wintterlin, F., & Quandt, T. (2025). A survey study on public attitudes toward gaming disorder. Media and Communication, 13, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.8701
[2] Daneels, R., Bowman, N. D., Possler, D., & Mekler, E. D. (2021). The ‘eudaimonic experience’: A scoping review of the concept in digital games research. Media and Communication, 9(2), 178–190. https://doi.org/10.17645/mac.v9i2.3824
[3] Daneels, R., Vandebosch, H., & Walrave, M. (2020). “Just for fun?”: An exploration of digital games’ potential for eudaimonic media experiences among Flemish adolescents. Journal of Children and Media, 14(3), 285–301. https://doi.org/10.1080/17482798.2020.1727934
[4] Mekler, E. D., Iacovides, I., & Bopp, J. A. (2018). “A game that makes you question…”: Exploring the role of reflection for the player experience. In F. Mueller, D. Johnson, & B. Schouten (Eds.), CHI PLAY ’18: Proceedings of the 2018 annual symposium on computer-human interaction in play (pp. 315–327). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3242671.3242691
[5] Oliver, M. B., Bowman, N. D., Woolley, J. K., Rogers, R., Sherrick, B. I., & Chung, M.-Y. (2016). Video games as meaningful entertainment experiences. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 5(4), 390–405. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000066
[6] Possler, D., Kümpel, A. S., & Unkel, J. (2020). Entertainment motivations and gaming-specific gratifications as antecedents of digital game enjoyment and appreciation. Psychology of Popular Media, 9(4), 541–552. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000248
[7] Bowman, N. D., Daneels, R., & Possler, D. (2024). Excited for eudaimonia? An emergent thematic analysis of player expectations of upcoming video games. Psychology of Popular Media, 13(3), 416-427. https://doi.org/10.1037/ppm0000474
[8] Possler, D., Daneels, R., & Bowman, N. D. (2024). Players just want to have fun? An exploratory survey on hedonic and eudaimonic game motives. Games and Culture, 19(5), 611-633. https://doi.org/10.1177/15554120231182498
[9] Possler, D., Bowman, N. D., Daneels, R., Hecht, S., & Maes, K. (2025, June 12-16). Development and validation of the motivations of eudaimonic gaming (MEG) scale [Paper presentation]. The 75th annual International Communication Association (ICA) conference, Denver (CO), USA.
[10] Denisova, A., Bopp, J. A., Nguyen, T. D., & Mekler, E. D. (2021). “Whatever the emotional experience, it’s up to them”: Insights from designers of emotionally impactful games. In Y. Kitamura & A. Quigley (Eds.), CHI ’21: Proceedings of the 2021 CHI conference on human factors in computing systems (pp. 1–9). ACM. https://doi.org/10.1145/3411764.3445286

This talk explores how gender is lived and negotiated within the Warhammer 40K hobby. Drawing on fieldwork in a Groningen store and online fandom, we examine how masculine and non-male experiences coexist in this community. Women and non-male players describe ongoing exclusions that shape who feels they belong. At the same time, many male hobbyists seem to use the game’s hyper-masculine imagery as cover for gentler, creative forms of connection, painting, storytelling, and friendship. We ask whether these practices might represent emerging, community-based masculinities, or whether they remain constrained by the structures that exclude others. Our aim is to understand these dynamics from within the hobby itself, centring players’ own accounts rather than assumptions from outside. In doing so, we open a conversation about how analogue play can complicate common narratives of toxicity and point toward more relational futures of gaming.

Pentiment seems to be made for academic research: its clear historical influences on a formal (artistic) level mesh with the inner life of the main character who seems to suffer from contemporary sensibilities. Taking the recently published “The Name of the Reader” (Aksay et al, 2025) as a jumping-off point, this presentation re-analyses Pentiment in order to position it as not merely metareferential. The game is indebted to Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose, which is more than just “one of its main literary influences” (Aksay, 172): Pentiment is a pastiche of the book.

  The theoretical goal of this paper is to realign research on metamodern games with contemporary discussions of metamodernism. Previous metamodern game research, like Hans-Joachim’s discussion of Deathloop from 2022, take the concept straight from its initial formulation by Vermeulen & Van den Akker (2010). By utilizing the “Metamodern pastiche” dossier in Screen (Vermeulen & Willins, 2024) on top of that, this talk enables future metamodern game studies to be grounded in more contemporary ideas of our current paradigm.

    This talk will show how Pentiment is a metamodern pastiche by highlighting its “New Sincere” affective layer on top of its complex relation with The Name of the Rose. It also highlights how unique “gamic” qualities like dialogue trees enable it to be analysed through that metamodern lens.

Works cited:

Aksay, Kübra, et al. “‘The Name of the Reader’: Constructing the Bookish Player in Pentiment.” Videogames and Metareference. Theresa Krampe and Jan-Noël Thon, eds. Routledge, 2025. 169-187.

Backe, Hans-Joachim. “Deathloop”: the Meta (modern) Immersive Simulation Game.” Game Studies 22.2 (2022).

Vermeulen, Timotheus, and Robin Van den Akker. “Notes on metamodernism.” Journal of aesthetics & culture 2.1 (2010): 5677.

Vermeulen, Timotheus, and Kim Wilkins. “Metamodern pastiche Introduction.” Screen 65.1 (2024): 116-120.

Article 39 of the recent EU Digital Services Act requires the biggest social media sites (Facebook, Instagram, etc.), to publish a database of all paid advertising shown. Which user demographics the ad was intended to ‘target’ and how many users of various demographic groups eventually ‘reached’ must also be published. This transparency measure enables the public to better scrutinise big tech companies. Game researchers should use it to, inter alia, study para-text and contribute evidence to policy debates, thus encouraging policymakers to adopt more similar rules.

I share how to use advertising libraries and present results from our research using this method. In the UK and South Korea, we studied thousands of ads for popular games with loot boxes to find that less than 10% disclosed the presence of loot boxes as required by UK, EU, and South Korean consumer law. The few disclosures we found were also often visually obscured. In Belgium, we found that most games with loot boxes, which uniquely constitute illegal gambling there, were illegally advertised to Belgian users, even though excluding Belgians from being shown the ad is trivially easy.

I also argue that gambling is part of game research. Therefore, I also share our findings as to how a small minority of gambling ads illegally targeted under-24s in the Netherlands. We also discovered how some gambling ads reached significantly more men (who are more vulnerable to harm), but one company specifically targeted young women, whom casinos traditionally struggled to attract, using get-ready-with-me aesthetics.

As mobile casual games continue to dominate global markets, their monetization strategies—particularly freemium models based on advertising and in-game purchases— have become central to both game development and player experience. While these practices have been analyzed and critiqued from perspectives such as game design, ethics, and player agency, limited attention has been paid to the opaque internet-based ecosystem behind them, which contains, among other things, monetization intermediaries mostly invisible to the public eye.

This paper focuses on Ad Monetization, a task and role within game publishing dedicated to optimizing revenue from advertising on mobile game apps by managing so-called mediation platforms, especially in the hyper-casual segment. I will address the underlying logics and formulas as part of the broader attention economy that aims to maximize profits by selling the ‘player commodity’ (Nieborg, 2017). More specifically, the paper analyzes the ways in which best practices are communicated as part of the sector’s ‘para-industry’ (Caldwell, 2014). By doing so, the paper argues for a broader understanding of game studies toward an approach that includes also ‘low culture’ and surrounding phenomena such as hyper-casual games, advertisements and internetbased media industries. As mobile games are embedded in wider infrastructures of data collection, personalization, and surveillance, examining these practices moreover offers insights into broader societal developments in the digital networked society. Simultaneously, the study addresses how mobile game developers and publishers understand themselves as (creative) professionals situated within this larger ecosystem.

References:

Caldwell, J. T. (2014). Para-Industry, Shadow Academy. Cultural Studies, 28(4), 720–740. https://doi.org/10.1080/09502386.2014.888922

Nieborg, D. B. (2017). App Advertising: The Rise of the Player Commodity. In J. F. Hamilton, R. Bodle, & E. Korin (Eds.), Explorations in Critical Studies of Advertising (pp. 28–41). Routledge.

2024’s hit roguelike deck-builder Balatro has gone through a tumultuous relationship with the PEGI ratings board. First, in March 2024, it had its 3+ age rating changed to 18+ on the account of ‘prominent gambling imagery and material that instructs about gambling.’ Then, after a successful appeal, in February 2025 this was changed back to 12+ because of ‘mitigating fantastical elements.’ Developer Playstack has always maintained that ‘painstaking care has been taken to ensure that the game does not feature gambling mechanics of any kind.’ At the heart of this dispute is not gambling-based gameplay or monetization, but the audiovisual representation of gambling: the game’s use of poker hands, but also its lo-fi graphics and Luis Clemente’s mesmerizing musical score.

This paper asks whether Balatro’s score is part of the ‘prominent gambling imagery’ or the ‘mitigating fantastical elements’, connecting it to questions of gameplay and theming—or rules and fiction (cf. Juul 2005)—and the historical role of music in gambling. While much of this is concerned with the ‘interactive’ sounds (cf. Collins 2008; 2011; 2016) of slot machines that directly respond to player success, there are also examples of continuous background music in both machines and casino environments (Dixon et al. 2007). I argue that Balatro’s score and its surrounding discourse can be contextualized in this history. Particularly its continuous, uninterrupted form and ambient qualities can be seen as commenting on the two roles that background music has played in the history of gambling.

References
Collins, K., Holly Tessler, K. Harrigan, M. Dixon, and J. Fugelsang. ‘Sound in Electronic Gambling Machines: A Review of the Literature and Its Relevance to Game Sound’, 2011. https://doi.org/10.4018/978-1-61692-828-5.CH001.
Collins, Karen. ‘Game Sound in the Mechanical Arcades: An Audio Archaeology’. Game Studies 16, no. 1 (October 2016). http://gamestudies.org/1601/articles/collins.
Dixon, Laura, Richard Trigg, Mark Griffiths. ‘An Empirical Investigation of Music and Gambling Behaviour. International Gambling Studies 7, no. 3 (2007): 316.
Juul, Jesper. Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds. MIT Press, 2005.
‘PEGI Complaints Board Amends Classifications of “Balatro” and “Luck Be A Landlord” to PEGI 12 | Pegi Public Site’. Accessed 27 February 2025. https://pegi.info/news/pegi-complaints-board-amends-classifications-balatro-and-luck-be-landlord-pegi-12.
Playstack [@PlaystackGames]. ‘Https://T.Co/MroeavYY9U’. Tweet. Twitter, 1 March 2024. https://x.com/PlaystackGames/status/1763614758043795909.

In recent years, role-playing games (RPGs) have experienced a surge in popularity, providing a diverse and dynamic space for interactive storytelling for players. One of these games is Dungeons & Dragons (D&D), a game where players create characters and navigate a fantastical world through collaborative storytelling. Despite D&D’s fantastical setting, many scholars and critics have pointed out how the lore mirrors real-world colonial and racial biases, potentially influencing how players perceive and interact with in-game race constructs. While racial representation in fantasy is often portrayed as innocently escapist and harmlessly entertaining, their existence often is built on the foundations of colonial encounters with otherness, connecting fantasy races directly with colonialism and “the other”, drawing on stereotypes that carry real-world implications. Race and racism are increasingly central to public discourse, with growing scrutiny of how fantasy portrays difference and diversity. While several studies served to identify problematic racial structures in D&D’s source material, little attention has been paid to how they manifest during actual gameplay.

Through semi-structured interviews, this study examines the racial dynamics within D&D and the experiences of players engaging with racial themes. Through snowball sampling, 25 interviews were conducted, diving into players’ perceptions of race in character creation and world-building, their experiences with racism both in and out of the game, and their reflections on how these elements relate to real-world social issues.

Many online games are affected by toxicity, an umbrella term for disruptive behaviours (eg, harassment and hate speech). In this talk, I will present findings from a study, in which we investigated self-regulation ability and basic psychological need satisfaction and frustration as predictors of self-reported toxic behaviours using data from an online survey with 167 League of Legends players. Our findings highlight a negative total effect of self-regulation on toxic behaviours, mostly driven by an indirect effect through need frustration. Beyond this, we further explored how emotion regulation styles relate to toxicity and found a negative relationship between suppressive emotion regulation and toxicity, while dysregulation had a positive association with toxicity. I will discuss the findings (e.g., considering both dispositional and situational factors that explain toxicity) and implications (e.g., supporting the design of preventative interventions).

This study explores how young Chinese female gamers navigate and reshape digital platforms to cultivate feminist belongingness that extends beyond male-dominated gaming spaces. Although women make up nearly half of the gaming population in China, their voices remain marginalised within gaming cultures shaped by masculine norms, platform governance, and algorithmic bias. Yet, within this deeply mediatised context, like Bilibili, Xiaohongshu, and Douyin, these gamers transform gaming into a social, affective, and political practice.

Drawing on a mixed-methods study (survey n=752; netnography of 343 posts and videos), this research examines how Chinese female gamers remix game content, deploy humour and aesthetic creativity, and build relational networks of care and resistance. Their cross-platform practices, ranging from feminist awards and game reviews to collective boycotts, redefine what participation and skill mean in deeply mediatised cultures.

By theorising these practices through belongingness and feminist digital culture, the study argues that “gaming beyond games” is a mode of world-making: an everyday feminist negotiation of visibility, agency, and cultural transformation. Thus, it invites future game studies to look beyond play itself and engage more deeply with the relational, affective, and feminist transformations shaping digital gaming cultures.